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Martin Luther King Speech Rhetorical Analysis Essay

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On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people gathered near the Lincoln Memorial to hear Martin Luther King, Jr, a young black minister, give his speech. In this motivational speech about jobs and freedom, Martin Luther King, Jr. inspires his audience through the use of repetition, allusion, and the rhetorical appeal of Ethos to advocate for equal rights for everyone. Throughout the beginning of his speech, when King references the Emancipation Proclamation and Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves, he implies repetition when he says, “ one hundred years later,” four times (3). King does this to emphasize how so much time has passed, and now is the time for a change. King also uses repetition at the beginning of his speech when talking about how it is urgent to change now when saying, “ Now is the time,” four times (6). He says this 4 times, as well as in the beginning to show his urgency in how we must act now and that there cannot be a future date to change. He uses repetition to get his point across and make it something everyone can remember. …show more content…

Early in his speech, he talks about how they were promised freedom by the Declaration of Independence In which he states, “the architects of our republic,” which he alludes to the founding fathers (4). He alludes to the founding fathers to show how they had promised freedom to all black and white men, yet this failed to be true because discrimination counts as not having freedom. As well as this King references a direct quote from the Declaration of Independence when saying, “ Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (4) King uses this direct quote to establish what everyone was promised, by the Declaration of Independence. All of these quotes that King has used are to how everyone should have already been treated

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